EGYPT: Street children in Cairo find help, shelter and rehabilitation at Kafr el Sisi centre for children

Record ID: 173130

  • Title: EGYPT: Street children in Cairo find help, shelter and rehabilitation at Kafr el Sisi centre for children
  • Date: 1st March 2007
  • Summary: (MER-1) CAIRO, EGYPT (RECENT - FEBRUARY 18, 2007) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF KAFR EL SISI CENTRE FOR CHILDREN AT RISK IN GIZA
  • Embargoed: 16th March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Egypt
  • Country: Egypt
  • Topics: Domestic Politics,Social Services / Welfare
  • Reuters ID: LVA1K7F7OSMNISNEJU4L66OJFHXY
  • Story Text: For the workers from the Kafr Al-Sisi centre, finding the homeless children they hope to bring off of the streets is not the problem.
    The hardscrabble, teeming avenues of Giza are full of kids who have been cast adrift by broken families or through the vagaries of fate.
    The real problem is convincing the kids to come back to the nearby centre where the staff tries to rehabilitate them and re-integrate them into a society that often regards them with contempt.
    Safwat Kamal, the field director for the centre, which is run by the Egyptian branch of the International NGO Caritas, says that the kids they approach are frequently suspicious.
    "They speak to you and they negotiate with you and some of them come and there are some who refuse. The ones that refuse are afraid, because they have never tried anything like this before, so they're afraid. Afraid that they will come and you will take them to some other place, or arrest them and take them to the police. So there are some of them that come with us, they tell their friends that haven't come before, so they come with them. There are some children that bring children also," he said.
    The centre's workers may have benevolent intentions, but the wariness of the children who endure daily violence on Cairo's chaotic streets is perhaps understandable. The traumatic stories relate are told matter-of-factly, and they speak of young lives exposed to the worst that human nature has to offer.
    Layla Sharif Al-Sayyed, who left a violent household in which her stepmother burned her with hot cooking oil, spoke of the constant fear of the young men who prey on girls like her, kidnapping and sexually abusing them using same types of mini-buses driven by the Kafr Al-Sisi centre.
    For Layla the one person who should have been her guardian was one of her tormentors.
    "My father doesn't stop it. He does the same thing as her," she said.
    Having lost a roof above her head, children like Layla survive by begging, or selling flowers or disposable handkerchiefs in order to make enough money to eat. It is rarely enough and most suffer from malnutrition. To escape many turn to drugs or sniffing glue.
    Mohammad Ramadan's story is also typical. He has a home, but no shelter.
    "Because my oldest brother was always hitting me, and stuff. So I'm afraid to return home by myself, someone has to come find me and get me," he said.
    Ibrahim Wadia, the center's director, goes out regularly with the field workers to follow up with the kids who have been persuaded to come in to the center and to find new kids.
    "For that reason, field worker has two objectives - the first aim is to follow up the cases of those who come regularly to the center. The second aim is, if we find new children, we try to persuade them to come to the center with the help of the kids who come regularly to the center," he said.
    Mohammad Ahmed Omar, a young street kid, like many others, does not know his own age, looks frightened at first as Safwat Kamal and another boy try to talk to him, but he is eventually coaxed into the centre's van.
    At the center, Mohammad will have a shower, a meal, and a good night's sleep before beginning the process of rehabilitation.
    Mohammad says his mother died and his father went to live in Libya and abandoned him. He has no siblings either, so re-uniting him with his family is not an option.
    The Kafr Al-Sisi Center for Children at Risk has been operating for three years under the auspices of Caritas Internationalis, an international Catholic development and social services organization.
    Last week UNICEF's Executive Director, Ann Veneman, paid a visit to the center with Caritas Egypt's director, Dr. Magdi Garas.
    Ms. Veneman visited the literacy classes and vocational workshops where the children spend most of their time during the day.
    "I mean these children living on the streets are really losing their childhoods. And I think the centre is giving them an opportunity to get an education, to go to school, and to hopefully have a chance of getting off the street and leading a productive life," she said.
    What seems to strike most street children about the Kafr Al-Sisi centre is that the staff actually care about them. After years on the streets for many, it is not intuitive that adults would want to help them rather than take advantage of them.
    "Before, it was normal for me to be put in jail, no one cared about me. If I got sick no-one took me to the hospital, no-one asked about me. But later the centre became my family," says Nada Mohsen, an orphan who has been coming to the centre for three years.
    The centre offers several workshops, among them woodworking, drawing and painting, leather work, and making porcelain and the kids produce handicrafts that are sold in the NGOs many centres and in other shops.
    Mohammed Abbas, who also comes from a broken family, says he's learned a great deal.
    "I learned the discipline, and I learned a lot of things. I learned drawing, sewing, painting, how to make wallets - I learned a lot of things," he said.
    The Kafr Al-Sisi centre receives up to forty children every day, and its' staff says that in 2006 alone 1,500 kids have come through their doors. But the obstacles facing street kids are high, and in a country where poverty is rife, taking them off of the streets for good is a challenge.
    Around 95 kids were reunited with their families this year, and fifty or found places in local hostels.
    The centre is also trying to create a night dormitory that will be equipped to sleep several dozen children.
    Dr. Magdi Garas, the director of Caritas-Egypt, emphasizes that the centre is meant to be a transitional tool for the kids, and that his organization's main aim is rehabilitation.
    "The objective of the centre, first of all is to bring the children in and to get to know their problems, and to try and take them back to their families or to put them in nearby rehabilitation centres. And in order to establish a night centre so they don't sleep in the streets," he said.
    Despite the best efforts of centres like Kafr Al-Sisi, it's a hard road for the children that circumstance has delivered into the wilderness of Cairo's streets.
    In their efforts to escape their fate they face harsh socioeconomic realities, the pervasive threats of violence, and the opposition of adults like the ones who employ them on the streets and who do not want to lose them.
    But for some of the countless homeless kids at least in Giza there is a temporary shelter from the streets the forever seek to reclaim them, and the small prospect of a chance in life.
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